Screwed Up

“Californication” and “Tell Me You Love Me.”

A lecher in lotusland: David Duchovny as a bad-boy writer in L.A.Credit PABLO LOBATO

The portmanteau title of the new Showtime series “Californication,” in case you hadn’t noticed, contains a reference to a certain act, an act that is performed by two parties, but the act that the show itself calls to mind is the solitary and less fruitful act of autoerotic asphyxiation: this is a show that loves itself to death. Created by Tom Kapinos, who was a writer and a producer on “Dawson’s Creek” for a number of years, “Californication” follows the travails of a New York novelist turned Hollywood writer—Hello? You there? I thought I saw you nod off when I said “travails of a New York novelist turned Hollywood writer”—named Hank Moody. The problem is that Hank (David Duchovny) hasn’t written anything since he moved to Los Angeles, because he feels sick to the bottom of his soul. I believe this sickness has something to do with that city’s practice of using people until they’re all used up and then spitting them out, not to mention its low standards and its black heart. Hank’s novel “God Hates Us All,” a sturm-und-dranger, has been turned into a romantic comedy called “A Crazy Little Thing Called Love”; ads and posters featuring its stars, Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, seem to mock Hank as he moves through his days, unshaved and unemployed, except for his couplings with pretty much any woman he comes into contact with. Hank is in pain—he’s separated from his longtime partner, Karen (Natascha McElhone), and doesn’t get to see their twelve-year-old daughter, Becca (Madeleine Martin), as much as he’d like. Karen finally ran out of patience with his balkiness about marriage, left him, and is now engaged to a stiff named Bill (Damian Young, who was just as wooden as Lisa Kudrow’s husband in “The Comeback”).

“Californication” wants to have it all. It wants to be a comedy; a fist shaking at the depredations of the Hollywood machine (Kapinos has said that between “Dawson’s Creek” and “Californication” he wrote a handful of pilots that ended up going nowhere); a satire of same; and a heartstring-tugging family drama. The last would require us to care terribly whether Hank and Karen end up back together, with the family intact once again. The strange thing is that the family already seems intact: Karen is clearly still in love with Hank—either that or she has had her face surgically altered into a permasmile. Whenever he shows up, and despite the fact that he says rude things to her fiancé, Karen gives him adoring looks and laughs at his jokes (which are funny), as if he and she were still courting. But what’s most puzzling about “Californication” is that much of the time it resembles a soft-porn film, in the sense that there isn’t just nudity and sex but a particular kind of nudity and sex, shot in a particular way, aimed at a particular audience: girl invariably on top, man below keeping hands more or less to himself, in order to give the ta-ta cam maximum access. This kind of cheesiness is all about what the camera sees, rather than about the story and what the characters are feeling. (You can’t help remembering that Duchovny’s first TV series was the whisper-soft-porn show “Red Shoe Diaries.”) Twice in the first two episodes, women, for no reason, disrobe and ask Hank to evaluate their bodies.

It’s true that Hank is supposed to be cheesy; not using his “incredible talent,” as Karen calls it, has made him sloppy and stupid. But at the same time we’re meant to think that he’s basically a good guy. After all, the object of his fantasy life is none other than his ex. And several episodes end with him thinking deep, wistful thoughts about his daughter. (Becca, with thick, precisely cut black bangs and gigantic eyes, has an inexplicably freakish personality; the over-all impression she gives is of a combination of space alien, Wednesday Addams, and the twin girls who were photographed by Diane Arbus.)

The thing is, Hank is a good guy. Of course he is—he’s played by David Duchovny, the charmingest of men. (Duchovny is also an executive producer of the series, along with Kapinos.) He has built his reputation for charm and wit and droll self-deprecation as much on his hugely entertaining talk-show appearances—and his appearances on HBO’s “The Larry Sanders Show”—as he has on his acting, and we’re primed to like him. He doesn’t have much range as an actor, but with his intelligence and that glint in his eye he’s as starrily attractive as they come. During Duchovny’s “X-Files” heyday, a songwriter named Bree Sharp wrote a sweet and hilarious ballad sending up his popularity and his charisma: “American Heathcliff, brooding and comely, David Duchovny, why won’t you love me?” But even charisma has limits, and Duchovny’s perfume can’t mask the unpleasant odor that emanates from “Californication.”

There’s a Sunday-night HBO drama series débuting on September 9th that’s unlike anything that’s ever been on television. “Tell Me You Love Me,” created by Cynthia Mort, goes deep into the intimate lives of four couples, three of whom are in couples therapy with the same therapist—who’s played by Jane Alexander, the female half of the fourth couple. What’s different about “Tell Me” is that it sticks around after other dramas fade out—that is, in scenes where the traditional dénouement would be a fadeout that implies sex, the cameras keep rolling, and there we are, suddenly in virgin territory, so to speak, watching fictional couples go all the way. The show breaks new ground when it comes to explicitness, though with all the advance talk out there about how much flesh is onscreen in “Tell Me,” and to what uses that flesh is put, it has to be said that there is a lot you don’t see; there’s still some room for future shock in depictions of sex on TV.

“Tell Me” has its flaws, but it’s very watchable (and not merely because it’s arousing); its aim is to show you what committed relationships feel like, and how they work, and how strange and fragile and complicated they are. And, despite the fact that there are frequent therapy sessions, the show isn’t talky when it comes to sexual issues. There’s a creative clarity about the series: Mort is also an executive producer and the main writer, and you’re willing to go where she takes you, even if you find that one or two of the characters aren’t worth your attention, as I did. You get to know the couples’ marriages so well that you become invested in their problems; one couple, devoted upper-middle-class parents of elementary-school-age children, have become like sleepover buddies; they haven’t had sex for almost a year, and can’t find their way back to each other. It’s to the show’s credit that, as you watch these two aching people not have sex, week after week, you begin to feel that you’re invading their privacy. ♦